Fire! Fire!

It was really a pretty minor fire. The lobby building of the Inn filled with smoke, and we all evacuated to the parking lot. None of you outside of the Hood River-White Salmon metropolitan area will hear about it on your local news. And trust me the national news stations have much more interesting things to report. No one was hurt. There was little (if any) structural damage.

But for every hotelier, particularly those of us who started out our career as night auditors, spending many of our shifts as virtually the only employee of the hotel on property, just the idea of a fire is the nightmare of your existence. You dream of running the halls, screaming “FIRE! FIRE!”, like anyone could hear your shouts over the obnoxiously loud alarms.

I did nothing special; nothing to write home about. But I am exhausted. My body hurts. It is amazing what stress can do to a late-middle-aged body!